Data Driven Stocks

The Friday market sell-off was expected, but many were not prepared.

Want to be better prepared next time? Follow me.

I'm digging into those jobs numbers (more on my website, dds.finance).

But generally, it looks like those job gains are being driven by World Cup-related hiring. Most of them appear to be temporary blue-collar positions.

So there doesn't seem to be any meaningful "real" job growth in the U.S. in May 2026.

Who would have expected the market to sell off?

RAM prices are going vertical. Contract prices across every major DRAM segment are forecast to nearly double - and PC memory more than doubles - in a single quarter. The AI memory squeeze has officially reached your shopping cart.

Next week, we officially begin the third month of the Strait of Hormuz closure.

So far, traffic by Western-aligned oil tankers remains at 0% of pre-war levels. In other words, all such traffic has been halted for nearly three months.

Brent in euros just fell -34% from its April peak -- from €119/bbl down to €78/bbl today, as 8th Opening of the Strait of Hormuz happens and the 16th "close" Iran and U.S. deal exists.

European pump prices? Barely moved.

Germany is at €2.025/L. France at €2.109/L. Both are near their March peaks -- the highest levels since 2022 -- and pulling back only slowly. Italy reached €1.964/L in a delayed spike that only hit in May. Spain at €1.568/L.

The EU average sits at €1.851/L -- up +19% since February 23, the day before the Iran war started.

Rockets and feathers in full effect -- just in euros this time. Crude crashes in two weeks - a biggest oil crash since COVID19 2020 per WSJ.

We are witnessing the largest discrepancy between paper and physical oil in human history.

China keeps buying NVIDIA GPUs despite all the restrictions.

To do so, NVIDIA is allegedly using smuggling routes to sell them to China.

A link can be found in the comments section!

I'm still waiting for AXIOS news about the opening of Strait of Hormuz (another one this year, we had not enough openings!).